On January 19th, at 11:30 at night, half an hour before the deadline set by Qi Kaiwei, Wei Chenglong issued an order to attack Volgograd to the front line troops.

The Battle of Volgograd began.

This battle was not only about Volgograd, but was carried out on the vast battlefield starting from Astrakhon in the south and ending in Saratov in the north. The Chinese Army initially used sixteen armies, of which were fighting on the front line, and the other two armies acted as strategic reserves. On the other hand, the main force of the US-Russian coalition was the Russian Caucasian Front and the Volga Front, as well as ten US divisions and part of the Kursk Front. In the later stage of the battle, the Chinese Army invested more troops to twenty-six armies, and the US-Russian coalition sent more Moscow Front, Ulyanov Front and Ural Front, and the United States sent more eighteen divisions. In the end, the two sides invested more than six million troops on this battlefield.

This is the largest ground war since the war began.[..com]

Volgograd - the city once called Stalingrad - is destined to write a chapter of history full of blood and killing again, becoming a great battlefield that determines the direction of the war, and once again making both sides pay a heavy price here.

Through the previous introduction, it is basically certain that the Battle of Volgograd can be avoided, and to be precise, the tragic result of the Battle can be completely avoided.

If it is delayed by one month, this battle will be completely different.

Unfortunately, Qi Kaiwei and Huang Hanlin did not give Wei Chenglong a month, even if they had one more day, they would not do it.

After the battle started, the ground attack did not begin. In addition to Wei Chenglong's intentional delay in the ground attack, it was also related to the situation of the front-line troops.

Relatively speaking, the situation in the 39th Army was the worst.

Compared with the pre-war war, the 39th Army had undergone great changes, mainly "slimming down", that is, cutting off too many armored troops and adding an army aviation corps. The troops were controlled at about 50,000, which was comparable to other Class A Army armies and was no longer a unique heavy-armed army.

For the 39th Army, such a reduction is beneficial, such as losing the heavy logistics burden.

According to the pre-war organization, the total logistics support of the 39th Army was 15 times that of other army groups, and it is more suitable for local operations. The actual situation on the battlefield has proved that, in most cases, increasing the organizational scale of the army cannot effectively improve the combat capabilities of the army groups. Even at the tactical level, the size of the organization is not the main factor that determines the outcome of the battle.

Based on these situations, the 39th Army completed the weight loss work before joining the war.

Of course, it is undeniable that the 39th Army is still the ace force in the Chinese Army, and its combat effectiveness is definitely ranked among the top two.

However, after the Battle of Akhtubinsk, the 39th Army suffered a great "strike".

It is not a physical blow, but a psychological blow.

In the 39th Army, a problem that existed in the Chinese Army was exposed: the rapid expansion of the military scale led to a decrease in the quality of officers and soldiers.

As mentioned earlier, after the outbreak of the war, Qi Kaiwei began to promote soldiers to serve as officers.

Although Qi Kaiwei had already prepared, that is, in peacetime, the construction of the Chinese Army mainly focused on cultivating backbone personnel to quickly expand the size of the army during the war. Therefore, in addition to officers, soldiers also received many training opportunities. The proportion of sergeants in the soldiers exceeded 80%, and almost all non-professional sergeants could become grassroots officers after simple training. This means that there are nearly 400,000 grassroots officers in the Chinese Army to reserve talents, and during the war, the size of the army can be rapidly expanded to more than 4 million on this basis. However, during the expansion, some people also raised objections, that is, the rapid expansion of the troops will inevitably lead to a decline in the quality of officers and soldiers, thus leading to a total war in the army.

The fighting power declined. At that time, Wei Chenglong was the one who took the lead in opposing it. In his opinion, the Army should imitate the Marine Corps, establish an efficient soldier training mechanism, and extend the training cycle of the recruits to more than one year. Wei Chenglong had a good idea, but it was impossible to do it, because the Army was not a Marine Corps, and the harsh environment the Army faced was not comparable to that of the Marine Corps. You must know that there was a strong navy behind the Marine Corps. As long as the navy was still active in the ocean, the Marine Corps would not be under great pressure, and at most it would be postponed to launch a strategic counterattack. The Army did not have such a good environment. The Roman Kingdom could not quickly expand its troops during wartime, so when the enemy was strong invading the border, what they had to face was the danger of destruction of the country.

It is undeniable that Wei Chenglong’s worries make sense.

The main thing is that among the basic factors that determine the combat effectiveness of the army, in addition to excellent grassroots officers, there must also be equally outstanding sergeants and well-trained soldiers.

It can be seen that the approach Qi Kaiwei actually only attaches importance to grassroots officers and ignores sergeants and soldiers.

The result is that when the army scale rapidly expands, the combat effectiveness of each combat unit has decreased to varying degrees.

The main reason is that in order to expand the size of the army, grassroots officers and soldiers of various Class A armies were promoted to officers in large numbers, and those who were supplemented with these troops were those recruits who had only been trained for less than half a year.

The 39th Army was no exception. After heading to the Far East battlefield, the Army lost 60% of grassroots officers and soldiers.

Although it is not difficult to replenish troops, and the training level of the Chinese Army is higher than that of the army of other countries, the recruits are still recruits, which are definitely not as good as professional soldiers who served before the war, and even less than experienced veterans. It is inevitable that the combat effectiveness will decline.

Relatively speaking, the psychological quality of officers and soldiers has been reduced the most significantly.

After the Battle of Akhtubinsk, almost 8,000 officers and soldiers of the 39th Army received psychological counseling, of which 3,167 were diagnosed with "war syndrome" and needed psychological treatment, and more than 600 officers and soldiers were deported.

In fact, the Chinese army did not pay enough attention to psychiatry at that time. Many officers and soldiers who suffered from "war syndrome" could only get help from field doctors. Among them, the field doctors almost did not understand psychology and often prescribe some antidepressants, interpreting "war syndrome" as a psychiatric condition under high pressure without giving correct treatment. At that time, only a very small number of officers and soldiers who had serious enough to affect normal activities were deported and sent to a large hospital in the rear for specialized treatment by psychology experts.

In fact, it was the Battle of Akhtubinsk that began to make the Chinese Army pay attention to mental illness.

However, in early 2054, there were not many psychological experts in the Chinese Army, and they did not pay enough attention to the psychological state of officers and soldiers. It was not until the second half of 2055 that the research on mental illnesses in wars became more and more in-depth, the Army began to pay attention to the psychological state of front-line officers and soldiers, and provided more comprehensive psychological counseling for front-line officers and soldiers to solve the impact of psychological illnesses.

At that time, the officers and soldiers of the 39th Army still had to fight on the front line.

Fortunately, Wei Chenglong has already realized this problem and believes that the proportion of new recruits is relatively high, which has led to the decline in combat effectiveness of the 39th Army.

In fact, Wei Chenglong's understanding is wrong.

According to post-war statistics, the proportion of soldiers suffering from mental illness after serving one year is higher than that of new soldiers, so the number of soldiers participating in the war is not the main factor of mental illness. The root cause of mental illness in war is fast pace and high-intensity combat operations have caused serious mental burdens on soldiers. The most effective solution is to let the troops fight in turn and allow front-line officers and soldiers to get enough rest time.

At that time, Wei Chenglong's solution to the problem was to withdraw the 39th Army from the army to rest.

Although Qi Kaiwei gave him very limited time, which prevented him from rotating the first and second tiers, he was at least able to replace the troops in his worst condition.

The 42nd Army was replaced by the 39th Army.

However, due to the limitations of the battlefield conditions and especially the urgent time, the 39th Army did not retreat to Kazakhstan as a strategic reserve, but stayed behind the 42nd Army and acted as a combat reserve, and was sent to the battlefield shortly afterwards.

According to Wei Chenglong's deployment, the attack on Volgograd will be carried out from three directions.

First, the Central Army Group, which was the main force of the 38th Army, the 238th Army as the reserve, directly attacked Volgograd; second, the 65th Army, the 165th Army as the main force, and the 265th Army as the reserve, attacked Saratov; then, the 42nd Army, the 139th Army as the reserve, and the 39th Army as the reserve, and the 39th Army as the reserve, and marched towards the Black Sea and the Caucasus. Behind the three armies are the 154th Army, the 254th Army, the 142nd Army, and the 242nd Army.

The battle reserve team composed of the Army Group and the 239th Army Group are then the strategic reserve team composed of the 15th Airborne Army Group and the 115th Army Group. If necessary, Wei Chenglong can also mobilize the 111th Army Group, the 112th Army Group, the 114th Army Group and the 116th Army. By the end of February, the 117th Army Group, the 118th Army Group, the 119th Army Group and the 120th Army Group. In April, there will be 121st Army Group, the 122nd Army Group, the 123rd Army Group, the 124th Army Group, the 125th Army Group and the 126th Army Group, and they can be sent to the battlefield.

It can be seen from this that Wei Chenglong has very sufficient troops.

However, the battle against Volgograd did not become easy because of sufficient troops.
Chapter completed!